World News Quick Take

Agencies

FRANCE

Marseille crackdown vowed

Authorities vowed action to fight rampant street crime in Marseille on Tuesday after the latest in a string of deadly gang shootings. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and five ministers rushed to Marseille after news of Monday’s killing, which saw a 25-year-old suspected drug dealer riddled with bullets. “The government has committed with determination to reducing the violence, delinquency and crime in Marseille,” Ayrault said after visiting a hospital where a nurse was wounded in a knife attack on Sunday. Interior Minister Manuel Valls promised more support for police fighting a wave of gun and drug crime in the city. Monday’s killing was the 13th gang-related murder this year in the city and followed two other brutal attacks this month.

INDIA

Murder prompts strike

A strike to protest at the killing of an anti-superstition activist shut businesses in Pune yesterday as police said they had made no progress in the case. Narendra Dabholkar, who campaigned for a law to eradicate superstition, was shot on Tuesday by two gunmen on motorbikes as he was taking his morning walk in Pune. Ninety percent of the city’s businesses and shops were closed yesterday by a protest strike called by local political parties and social organizations, a police officer said.

RUSSIA

Convictions over floods

A court yesterday convicted four former local officials of negligence during floods last year that killed more than 170 people, sentencing three of them to serve time. Flash flooding of a mountain river killed scores in their sleep in the pre-dawn hours on July 7 last year after officials issued no flood warning, in the worst such disaster of the post-Soviet era. The Abinsk Regional Court sentenced the former head of Krymsk district to six years in a colony settlemen, the former Krymsk mayor to three-and-a-half years and local emergency situations official to four-and-a-half years. The former head of the neighboring village of Nizhnebakanskaya, which was also affected, received a suspended sentence of three-and-a-half years.

UNITED STATES

Suspect’s injuries detailed

The surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect had been shot through the face and had a fractured skull, wounds to his lower extremities and bone injuries on his left hand when he was caught hiding in a boat, according to the surgeon who treated him. The most severe injury was from a bullet that appeared to enter through the left inside of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s mouth and exit the lower section of his face on the left side, Stephen Odom said during a legal proceeding at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center three days after capture. A transcript of the testimony was unsealed on Monday in US District Court in Boston, Massachusetts. Tsarnaev was wounded during a confrontation with police a day after authorities released photographs of him and his older brother, Tamerlan, as suspects in the bombing.

FRANCE

Theft suspect arrested

Police have arrested a suspected member of the infamous Pink Panther gang of international jewel thieves in Montpellier, police sources said yesterday. The suspect, a citizen of Montenegro aged about 40, was detained at his home in the city on Monday, despite trying to flee out of a window when police arrived, one source said. He was wanted in several countries, including under two international arrest warrants issued by Switzerland.